One of the things I find most interesting about social media and the way it is being used, is the way people are using it to directly interact with TV shows, and other fans of TV shows, they are watching. Be it Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Breakfast, First Line, Campbell Live, Seven Sharp or The Paul Henry Show.
Social media allows the viewers of shows to directly interact with the show. This is especially true for live to air, news and current affairs shows. The number of shows that now carry live tickers across the bottom of the screen with a feed of the tweets coming into their twitter account is significant. Then there are the shows where hosts read out the tweets on air, like they also do with emails and sometimes still faxes and letters.
What is also interesting is when viewers can tweet directly to the presenters. We have people like John Campbell, Duncan Garner, Wallace Chapman, Damian Christie, who are all on twitter. This allows viewers to engage with the people who are on TV, ask for more explanations, but also get an insight into how the people in the media think, which helps people to understand the views they may take into an interview.
The interesting part will be how do TV shows use this ability to interact directly with their viewers. Will we see questions coming in via twitter during the debates? (be they between the PM and Cunliffe, or the PM, Cunliffe and the Greens. Or the Minor party debates). Will we see twitter influencing who the shows ask on during the election campaign? Will shows push to create hashtags to focus discussion around their shows?
I will be watching to see how shows and their viewers interact. I will come back to this topic and look at it in more depth later on. But I am interested in your thoughts on this? Do you tweet at/about shows? Why do you do it?
